Abstract It was found in our daily teaching that most of the students regard the hydrogen bond between base pairs as the main reason for the double helix structure of DNA. Therefor, this paper designed a heuristic teaching process to clarify the major intermolecular interactions that promote the formation of perfect double helix structure of DNA. The course was performed by foreshadowing, problem-based discussion and expansion. During this learning process, students could not only deepen their understanding on some basic principles of chemistry, but also improved their abilities of analyzing and resolving problems.